Posted:21st Dec 2009so I have been trying to get horizontal cateyes down for a little while now and they have been driving my insane. I can always make them work for one or two rotations but past that it either turns into a weird extention, isolation, or anti spin... at this pint im wornering if im just over thinking the whole thing. I'm pretty sure i understand the concept of horizontal cat eyes, as it should be similar to vertical and diagonal cat eyes(both of which i can do well). generally i think about cat eyes in one of two ways, either an isolation with my hand moving the opposite direction of the poi head, or you can do two horizontal floats one up then one down so that the isolation point is in the middle of the poi. the theory is there, but does any one have a tip for making them work. I am really working towrds horizontal cateye vs isolation hybrids, but i dont want to get ahead of myself.

Posted:21st Dec 2009I need help with these too, I can't even do it diagonally, I can't even picture how it is supposed to work. I think of it as 2 floats, but I can do the vertical ones good, but really, I don't have that much of an urge to learn them, but it might give me something to do while the weather is shitty and cold.

Posted:21st Dec 2009Vertical cateyes are relatively easy because you have gravity to help you out, you just pull at the bottom and move your hand in a circle and gravity does the rest of the work.

With horizontal cateyes your arm and shoulder has to do all the work so forget for a moment everything involving vertical cateyes, just focus on pulling the poi quickly from one side to the other. At first the planes will go all over the place, but gradually try to smooth out this quick motion by tracing a circle with your hand. Try to get a firm solid stance with your feet in order to free up the movement of your arms and shoulder. Your arm/shoulder should tire quickly, if it doesn't then you're doing the cateye too slowly. (If you have some sort of injury in your shoulder DO NOT try to do horizontal cateyes)

To do the diagonal cateye, focus on the point where the poi head should reach and do a vertical cateye, then apply some of the horizontal cateye motion until you're doing a diagonal cateye.

I hope this helps, it took me about a month to get the motion smooth enough to do all the hybrids and flowers, but it's really fun.

Posted:22nd Dec 2009Originally Posted By: leospoiVertical cateyes are relatively easy because you have gravity to help you out, you just pull at the bottom and move your hand in a circle and gravity does the rest of the work.

With horizontal cateyes your arm and shoulder has to do all the work so forget for a moment everything involving vertical cateyes, just focus on pulling the poi quickly from one side to the other. At first the planes will go all over the place, but gradually try to smooth out this quick motion by tracing a circle with your hand. Try to get a firm solid stance with your feet in order to free up the movement of your arms and shoulder. Your arm/shoulder should tire quickly, if it doesn't then you're doing the cateye too slowly. (If you have some sort of injury in your shoulder DO NOT try to do horizontal cateyes)

To do the diagonal cateye, focus on the point where the poi head should reach and do a vertical cateye, then apply some of the horizontal cateye motion until you're doing a diagonal cateye.

I hope this helps, it took me about a month to get the motion smooth enough to do all the hybrids and flowers, but it's really fun.

I'll echo leospoi's comments about the body mechanics. Learning this move knotted the hell out of my shoulders for weeks. For me there were two "a ha!" moments in getting this movement down. The first was realizing that when you're performing a cateye in any orientation you're never doing a perfect circle with your hand. When it comes to the horizontal cateye, you're actually flattening your circle slightly vertically, so its elliptical and slightly wider at the bottom. The reason for this is that you're fighting gravity in a different way. The other a ha moment was, once this knowledge was in place, realizing that I could float the poi over when it was underneath my hand to get to the extension on the underside.

If you can visualize this from text, don't start with your poi in static spin--you'll actually have too much momentum going into the extension side. Try instead starting with a pendulum up top and when you're ready, see if you can drop your hand and snap the poi head back over your hand. The hardest part is catching the poi head on the other side before it drops below the line your hand is going across. You can think of this as being like a triangle: start up top with a pendulum, at the bottom far corner snap the poi head over the hand, at the near bottom corner catch the poi to go back into the float.

I had a hard time putting this together until I saw the horizontal cateye demoed. This is the video that made it click for me:

Good luck! This is one of those moves that really retrains your neuromuscular system in many ways. Once you get it, I think you'll find you have a lot more fine control over your floats and other moves.

Posted:23rd Dec 2009Thanks every one for the advice, I wasnt sure if i was doing it wrong when i was killing my shoulder, I geuss i was moving in the right direction . I have made alot of progress now, and just need to smooth it out. as always happy spinning.